Climate Justice for Rice Emissions Reduction: From the Anger of Filipino Smallholders

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● A protest organised by the Coalition Against Agrochemical Multinational Corporations in Quezon City, Philippines, October 2023. Image source: Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PANAP)
“Save our rice!” “IRRI, get out!” In October 2023, these angry slogans reverberated across multiple protest sites in the Philippines. The demonstrations were directed squarely at the Sixth International Rice Congress, hosted by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Against the backdrop of climate change and agricultural emissions reduction, the congress adopted the theme “Accelerating the Transformation of Rice Food Systems” and drew nearly 2,000 rice-industry representatives to discuss the future of rice. Yet with a registration fee as high as USD 800 (RMB 5,740), it effectively deprived local smallholders of their right to take part in the debate, reducing the congress to a business platform for agrochemical giants such as Bayer.

As one of the congress’s principal sponsors, the global agrochemical giant Bayer seized the opportunity to pitch its direct-seeded rice (DSR) planting system, encouraging farmers to purchase Bayer’s patented rice seeds and dedicated herbicide, all packaged as a solution to the climate crisis. This latest convergence of IRRI and agrochemical capital once again inflamed the anger of Filipino smallholders.

For years, IRRI has failed to build trust or a sound working relationship with local farmers — a failure rooted in the circumstances of IRRI’s founding and its close ties with agrochemical corporations.

I. How Did the Green Revolution’s IRRI Lose Farmers’ Trust?

Spearheaded by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Green Revolution began spreading across Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. Early projects were largely government-backed, promoting varieties carrying high-yielding genes (HYVs) to boost output and farmer incomes. This attracted farmers towards varieties that depended more heavily on chemical fertiliser and pesticides, while the corporations driving the Green Revolution reaped enormous profits in the process.

To achieve these objectives, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation established, in succession, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). In the 1970s, these research centres formed the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), whose core strategy remained the promotion of irrigation, mechanisation and chemical inputs to grow the high-yielding seeds developed by CGIAR member institutions.

Swept along by the Green Revolution, new varieties of wheat, rice and maize swiftly displaced farmers’ original local varieties from Mexico to the Philippines and India, overturning the agroecological logic under which farmers had long conserved diverse varieties adapted to different local conditions.

● IR8, the semi-dwarf high-yielding variety vigorously promoted by IRRI in the 1960s, later dubbed “Miracle Rice”, was bred from PETA, a parent from Indonesia, and DGWG from Taiwan. Image source: IRRI

In its early years, the Green Revolution did help several countries increase rice yields, but the gains were concentrated in irrigated farmland. Indonesia’s rice output rose by 85%, India’s trebled, and by 1979 the Philippines had even begun exporting rice.

As IRRI’s high-yielding rice varieties came to cover vast swathes of paddy fields across Asia, the negative consequences of industrialised agriculture began to surface, and farmers’ movements opposing the Green Revolution sprang up in region after region.

For most farmers, the initial windfall from higher yields gradually gave way to crushing debt. Many were unable to repay the heavy liabilities incurred by chemical fertiliser, pesticide and machinery costs, and struggled even to make ends meet.

At the time, farmers who joined anti-Green Revolution protests in Thailand and the Philippines said: “Before the Green Revolution, we were poor. After the Green Revolution, we are still poor. IRRI has done absolutely nothing for us.”

Secondly, the loss of rice varietal diversity made crops far more vulnerable to large-scale disease outbreaks.

Before the Green Revolution, the Philippines had roughly 4,000 rice varieties. By the mid-1980s, most of what farmers grew had been replaced by the semi-dwarf varieties bred by IRRI. Asian farmers’ organisations such as MASIPAG argue that the widespread monoculture of IRRI-promoted varieties was the root cause of the large-scale outbreak of rice bacterial blight in Southeast Asia.

● Bacterial blight is one of the principal diseases of rice, causing yield losses of 20–30%, up to 50% in severe cases, and even total crop failure. The left image shows rice affected by bacterial blight. In a recent report, PANAP demonstrated that, compounded by climate change, the large-scale use of insecticides increases the frequency and intensity of pest outbreaks, weakens pesticide efficacy, and thereby reduces crop resistance. Left image: Wikimedia Commons; right image: PANAP

MASIPAG maintains that the only effective way to control bacterial blight is to rebuild farmers’ seed systems, thereby cutting agrochemical inputs such as chemical fertiliser and insecticide, restoring biodiversity in the fields, and eliminating the conditions in which bacterial blight can take hold.

Yet IRRI did not adjust its strategy in response to the needs of smallholder farmers. Instead, it further expanded enterprise-oriented agricultural research, making stopgap fixes to an unsustainable production system.

In 2000, IRRI trialled genetically modified rice (BB Rice) in the Philippines to combat bacterial blight, but intense protests from farmers’ and consumer groups prevented it from gaining market approval. As recently as June 2023, the Healthy Crops Project, supported by IRRI, still follows the same approach, proposing gene-edited rice to tackle newly discovered strains of bacterial blight in East Africa.

● In April 2001, Filipino smallholders protested against BB Rice, the genetically modified rice developed by IRRI, in Los Baños, Laguna. Image source: MASIPAG

II. Rice Emissions Reduction: Who Bears the Hidden Costs?

In recent years, IRRI has sought to rebuild smallholders’ trust by tapping the carbon market that has grown up around climate action. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rice cultivation accounts for 9–11% of total agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (predominantly methane and nitrous oxide). The potential to mitigate climate change through rice methane reduction is roughly three to six times that of maize or wheat. In Asia, the world’s principal rice-growing region, rice emissions-reduction projects have naturally become a key focus of IRRI’s work.

Unlike maize, wheat and soybeans, rice cultivation still relies heavily on smallholders, so the vast majority of rice paddy methane-reduction projects adopt a corporate–small farm model: participating farmers grow rice to a company standard (such as the direct-seeded rice (DSR) system promoted by Bayer), generating carbon credits that provide supplementary income.

The Vietnam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation project, backed by IRRI and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has been hailed as one of the most successful cases of driving methane reduction in smallholder rice paddies.

The project spans 184,000 hectares (approximately 455,000 mu) of paddy fields. Through project training, farmers use designated low-emission rice seeds and learn two cultivation techniques developed by IRRI — applying organic fertiliser and organic pesticides, and reducing methane emissions by cutting irrigation and chemical fertiliser inputs to make rice plants more drought-tolerant.

However, many participating farmers have reported that IRRI’s methane-reduction techniques demand higher levels of technical skill and field management than traditional methods. Farmers must make frequent checks on plant condition in the paddies.

Moreover, organic fertiliser and organic pesticides cost more than conventional pesticides, yet yields are comparable to those of traditional methods. As a result, some farmers can only implement the measures partially — for example, reducing irrigation water in the paddies while still using cheaper chemical pesticides and chemical fertiliser. This compromise erodes some of the emissions-reduction benefits, since chemical fertiliser is a major source of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

More critically, the carbon credits currently paid to rice farmers are relatively low and highly volatile, averaging USD 15–30 per acre per year, equivalent to approximately RMB 17.7–35.4 per mu per year. With rice cultivation still dominated by smallholders, if carbon farming projects cannot deliver sufficient supplementary income, farmers will find it hard to afford the switch to lower-methane rice-growing methods.

III. When Digital Agriculture Replaces Farmers’ Decision-Making

Building on its push for rice paddy methane reduction, IRRI has once again deepened its partnerships with corporations to drive digital agriculture — such as the FarmRise big-data system that Bayer showcased at this year’s rice congress. FarmRise draws on 87.5 billion data points from 78.2 million hectares of farmland across 23 countries, collecting information from drones, sensors, automated farm machinery, satellites and farmers’ own entries, transmitting it to cloud servers for analysis and then offering farmers agronomic advice. Bayer claims this can help agricultural production systems achieve more precise emissions reductions.

But when digital technology supersedes farmers’ own judgement — when farmers more broadly accept information and guidance from agrochemical companies and planting decisions are driven by machine-generated data — how can the wisdom, knowledge and cultural traditions of smallholders possibly be sustained?

● The promotional interface of the FarmRise Google app. The image shows FarmRise using big data to diagnose crop diseases and provide agronomic advice. Image source: Google Apps
Moreover, agricultural data is itself a new market. The more agrochemical companies understand farmers’ planted varieties and cultivation methods, the easier it becomes for them to exploit data platforms to market their products. It is worth noting that many of the companies driving digital technology in food and agriculture are precisely the same agricultural firms that grew powerful through the Green Revolution. Large agricultural corporations such as Bayer, Corteva, UPL and Kubota have been steadily acquiring satellite data firms, drone companies and digital agriculture platforms for monitoring plant health, or partnering with such digital technology companies. This will undoubtedly drive an even greater concentration of power across the entire food and agriculture supply chain.

IV. Climate Action Rooted in Communities and Smallholders

Yet beyond the industrialised agriculture logic of the Green Revolution, there are growing examples across Asia of farmers and scientists working together successfully — combining agroecology with traditional varieties to tackle the climate crisis and proposing locally grounded solutions for emissions reduction and adaptation. After more than twenty years of effort, MASIPAG — a network of farmer-led public-interest organisations and scientists — has established what it calls the “IRRI Alternative” in the Philippines. MASIPAG organises training sessions, courses, workshops and mutual visits in various formats to strengthen farmers’ skills in managing biodiversity; it supports farmer–scientist collaboration and promotes farmer-led plant breeding and the conservation of genetic resources, enabling farmers to reclaim control over their seeds.

To date, MASIPAG has recovered several thousand local varieties suited to specific growing conditions, offering high yields, good flavour, rich nutrition and solid resistance to pests and diseases.

● MASIPAG organises tutorials on seed selection, seed saving and plant breeding, co-developed by scientists and farmers, to help ordinary farmers find the varieties best suited to them and their local soil and climate. Image: Foodthink
● New varieties bred by farmer rice breeder Marcelino have been distributed to many farmers through MASIPAG. During Foodthink’s visit to MASIPAG in 2018, he was conducting experiments on drought-tolerant rice varieties. Image: Foodthink

India’s Deccan Development Society (DDS) has also helped more than 1,500 women reclaim control over local seed resources and knowledge. Since 1996, these women have designed their own systems for local production, storage and sale, seeking to reverse the trend of power concentration in the food system. Women involved with DDS have said that even economically poor farmers can feed themselves and their communities.

Similarly, Nayakrishi Andolon (the New Agricultural Movement) in Bangladesh promotes a Seed Network (NSN) that encourages decentralised, community-based seed management, helping farmers maintain crop diversity in the field while also keeping seed at home.

● In 2021–2022, Foodthink partnered with the Farmers’ Seed Network to fund twelve grassroots food and agriculture organisations in establishing community seed banks, promoting the conservation and in-situ use of farmer-maintained varieties, and empowering local communities to better cope with climate change. Image source: Foodthink
Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. In recent years, climate change has also delivered severe shocks to agricultural production, making it imperative to drive down farming emissions. But an effective solution could never be Bayer’s direct-seeded rice (DSR) system paired with herbicide and machinery use, or an agricultural data system that calls itself precision emissions reduction while in reality driving further consolidation among large agribusinesses. The key lies in building trust among smallholders and empowering them to act.

The time has come to return to community-based agricultural ecosystems, rebuild diverse cropping systems, incorporate more resilient local varieties, break free from dependence on agrochemicals, and cut off greenhouse gas emissions at their source — to face this climate crisis together.

References
[1] E+E Leader, “Bayer Develops Emissions Reducing Direct-Seeded Rice System”, 17 Oct 2023: https://www.environmentenergyleader.com/2023/10/bayer-develops-emissions-reducing-direct-seeded-rice-system/[2] MASIPAG, “The International Rice Congress: Further Corporate Dominance in Rice Science and Rice Industry”, 17 Oct 2023″, 17 Oct 2023: https://masipag.org/2023/10/the-international-rice-congress-further-corporate-dominance-in-rice-science-and-rice-industry/

[3] Rigg, Jonathan. “The Green Revolution and Equity: Who Adopts the New Rice Varieties and Why?” Geography, vol. 74, no. 2, 1989, pp. 144–50. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40571603. Accessed 26 Dec. 2023

[4] William G. Moseley, “Food Security & Green Revolution”: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

[5] https://www.healthycrops.org/

[6] Wolf B Frommer, Van Schepler-Luu etal. (2023), “Genome editing of an African elite rice variety confers resistance against endemic and emerging Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae strains”, eLife 12: e84864, https://doi.org/

[7] IPCC, “Contribution of working groups I, II and III to the 5th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change Synthesis Report”, 2014 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

[8] Linquist et al., “Fertilizer management practices and greenhouse gas emissions from rice systems: A quantitative review and analysis”, 2012

[9] UNFCC, “AMS-III.AU. Small-scale methodology. Methane emission reduction by adjusted water management practice in rice cultivation”, https://cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/DB/D14KAKRJEW4OTHEA4YJICOHM26M6BM

[10] Mekong Eye, “Low carbon rice fails to take root with Vietnamese farmers”, 27 Nov 2023: https://www.mekongeye.com/2023/11/27/low-carbon-rice-fails-to-take-root-with-vietnamese-farmers/?fbclid=IwAR05yn_SGEQeUOPbLiXNVpFki2KrimyExF909ofDfr6gPtw1e8ayeIqppHo

[11] Carbon Credits, “Agricultural Carbon Credits and Carbon Farming Guide”, 2022, https://carboncredits.com/what-are-carbon-credits-in-agriculture/ and Indigo Ag, https://www.indigoag.com/carbon/for-farmers

[1] ETC Group, “Food Baron 2022”, Sep 2022: https://www.etcgroup.org/content/food-barons-2022

[1] http://www.ddsindia.com/www/default.asp

[1] https://ubinig.org/index.php/nayakrishidetails/showAerticle/2/46/english

Foodthink Author
Lin An
A public-interest practitioner researching agroecology and community-supported agriculture development, facilitating climate change adaptation exchanges among smallholder farmers in Asia.

 

 

 

 

Editor: Ze’en

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